Riding a wave of momentum from a year filled with legislative victories, CUNA and the leagues have a full advocacy agenda for 2018.

At the CUNA Volunteer Conference in late January, CUNA Chief Advocacy Officer Ryan Donovan will outline four priorities for the coming year:

1. Reduce regulatory burden so members have access to more efficient and affordable financial services. This includes asking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) new leadership to fix burdensome rules, slow the pace of new rules, transfer supervisory authority of the largest credit unions back to NCUA, and use its exemption authority on credit unions’ behalf. CUNA also will engage with NCUA on examination and call report modernization, and support congressional regulatory relief efforts, including CFPB and Bank Secrecy Act improvements.

2. Expand and protect credit union powers so consumers and small businesses can better access the services they need. While preparing to introduce charter enhancement legislation in 2019, CUNA will monitor and promote the benefits of allowing supplemental capital for risk-based capital purposes, continue to defend NCUA’s field of membership rule, and work with Congress to revamp government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a way that maintains small lenders’ access to the secondary market.

3. Enhance payments security to reduce merchant data breaches’ impact on credit unions and members. CUNA will pursue legislation to subject merchants to more stringent data standards, examine ways to strengthen cyber infrastructure to protect member data, ensure CFPB and other agencies are protecting the consumer data they hold, and continue a litigation strategy to recover credit union losses and to obtain stronger data security policies.

4. Preserve the credit union tax status so credit union members continue to enjoy not-for-profit cooperative financial services. CUNA will actively engage the tax reform discussions to ensure Congress preserves the federal tax status and doesn’t undermine it through changes to unrelated business income tax or NCUA’s funding mechanism.